Project description:During infection, transcriptional changes in both the phage and its host bacterium influence the outcome of infection. The xenobiotic response element (XRE) family of transcription factors (TFs), which are commonly encoded by bacteria and phages, regulate diverse aspects of bacterial cell physiology and can impact phage infection dynamics. Through a pangenome analysis of Caulobacter species isolated from soil and aquatic ecosystems, we uncovered an apparent radiation of an XRE TF gene cluster, several of which have established functions in the regulation of holdfast adhesin development and biofilm formation in C. crescentus. We further discovered related XRE TFs across the class Alphaproteobacteria and its phages, including the φCbK Caulophage, suggesting that members of this gene cluster impact host-phage interactions. Here we show that that a closely related group of XRE proteins, encoded by both C. crescentus and φCbK, can interact to form heteromeric associations and control the transcription of a common gene set, influencing processes such as adhesin development and the progression of φCbK infection. The φCbK XRE paralog, tgrL, is highly expressed at the earliest stages of infection and can directly repress transcription of hfiA, a potent adhesion factor, and gafYZ, a transcriptional activator of prophage-like gene transfer agents (GTAs) encoded on the C. crescentus chromosome. A group of C. crescentus XRE proteins also directly repress gafYZ transcription, revealing a functionally redundant set of host regulators that may protect against spurious production of GTA particles and inadvertent cell lysis. Deleting host XRE transcription factors reduced φCbK burst size, while overexpressing these genes or φCbK tgrL rescued this burst defect. We conclude that a large XRE TF gene cluster, shared by C. crescentus and φCbK, plays an important role in adhesion regulation under phage-free conditions, and influences host-phage dynamics during infection.

Project description:In the alpha subclass of proteobacteria iron homeostasis is controlled by diverse iron responsive regulators. Caulobacter crescentus, an important freshwater Î±-proteobacterium, uses the ferric uptake repressor (Fur) for such purpose. However, the impact of the iron availability on the C. crescentus transcriptome and an overall perspective of the regulatory networks involved remain unknown. In this work we report the identification of iron-responsive and Fur-regulated genes in C. crescentus using microarray-based global transcriptional analyses. We identify 46 genes that were strongly upregulated both by mutation of fur and by iron limitation condition. Among them, there are genes involved in iron uptake (four TonB dependent receptor gene clusters, feoAB), riboflavin biosynthesis and some genes encoding hypothetical proteins. Most of these genes are associated with Fur binding sites, implicating them as direct targets of Fur-mediated repression. These data were validated by Î²-galactosidase and EMSA assays for two operons encoding putative transporters. The role of Fur as a positive regulator is also evident, given that 50 genes were downregulated both by mutation of fur and under low-iron condition. As expected, this group includes many genes involved in energy metabolism, mostly iron-using enzymes. Surprisingly, are also included in this group many genes encoding TonB dependent receptors and the genes fixK, fixT and ftrB encoding an oxygen signaling network required for growth during hypoxia. Bioinformatics analyses performed in the promoters of these genes suggest that positive regulation by Fur is mainly indirect. In addition to the Fur modulon, iron limitation altered expression of more 103 genes, including upregulation of genes involved in Fe-S cluster assembly, oxidative stress and heat shock response, as well as downregulation of genes implicated in amino acid metabolism, chemotaxis and motility. Altogether, our results showed that adaptation of C. crescentus to iron limitation involves increasing the transcription of iron-acquisition systems and decreasing the production of iron-using proteins as a general strategy Two experimental procedures, each of them performed in two replicates. A total of four independent biological samples were used

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A cryptic transcription factor regulates Caulobacter crescentus adhesion [RNA-seq]

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